I’m useless with illustrator so I need help.

I want to create some text in different colours and cut it out for a T-shirt.

when I select the text to create the cut line like I do with images the centre of the letters becomes filled leaving a white area.
How can I create a cut line for 3 lines of text but have them cut out the centre of the D, O, P and B for example instead of it becoming a solid image?